It's an odd fact of religious life in America that in this country founded by Christians, in which a majority of people say they believe in God and identify themselves as Christians, that so many religious Christians feel they're an oppressed minority. They say the media doesn't share their values. That secular institutions undermine their beliefs. And the job of raising Christian children, they'll tell you, is like trying to do God's work from behind enemy lines.

This week we're devoting our whole show to the kids they're struggling to bring up. This American Life host Ira Glass and producer Susan Burton spent a week in August recording a suburban Chicago youth group at every stage of their very first mission trip. The teenagers were from Covenant Presbyterian Church in Chicago. They went to West Virginia, to fix up someone's house, and to witness about their faith to strangers. The goal: That they mature from a child's kind of faith to an adult's. There's a boom in mission trips like this right now, a boom that crosses denominations.